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It also depends when you got into the IIT.

My dad got into an IIT and it was basically like you describe it. I got into IIT and it was like how this article describes it. It’s also gotten easier since I took the JEEs because they’ve quadrupled the number of seats available by enlarging the existing IITs and making a bunch of new colleges IITs, so I suspect it’s easier now than when I was taking those exams.

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The article rightly blames the scarcity for the problem. But bizarrely enough, one of the factors responsible is this gate keeping tendency that is inherent to the Indian culture. I still remember the whining that the expansion will dilute the “quality” from so many former IIT people.

The Government of India spends a lot of its resources badly for populist reasons, and scarcity can be mitigated with what they have currently on hand.

Though, gate keeping is a widespread human cultural tendency, India still hasn’t had any champions emerge, who have successfully fought against it, like for example Theodore Vail did in the US.

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